Listening to: Twilight Zone - Lupe Fiasco

As I have mentioned I have been advising VortexDNA. The Vortex guys are getting some great results (there will be more about that in the near future) with their technology and they’re looking at testing some interesting ideas.

Given that they have nailed the issue of relevance they are now pushing out and have started investigating the idea of the ‘My Web Hypothesis’:

Technology start-up VortexDNA is asking for volunteers to test the hypothesis that there is not just one Web.

Embedded within cyberspace, the organisation claims, there could be hundreds or even thousands of different web-worlds, each relevant to a group of people who share a similar outlook on life.

“This could lead to a profound change in the way we think about cyberspace and create a better web experience for everyone, “comments VortexDNA director Branton Kenton-Dau.

Called the ‘MyWeb’ hypothesis, the idea of thousands of web-worlds embedded in cyberspace is now being tested.

“Just as Newton passed sunlight through a prism to discover the entire spectrum of colour, VortexDNA wants to pass Google search results through a prism of your ‘DNA’ to see if your purpose, values and life focus provide you with a better search result,” explains Kenton-Dau.

When you think about it this is a very powerful concept … it’s the idea that amorphous mass of data that is the web can be tuned to match you, your needs and your goals. The Vortex guys are offering on of the key benefits of a walled garden app but on the public web … yeah, that’s pretty big

To test this idea on a larger group of users they are looking for people to start using their Firefox plugin.

Listening to: I Can’t Wait - Stevie Nicks

To think, I spent school English classes writing poems about a red-head with blue eyes … I have just seen how much I wasted that time:

H.A.M.S.T.E.R.S. A.R.E. E.V.I.L.

Originally uploaded by lla.

Just awesome!

Listening to: From Yesterday - 30 Seconds to Mars

Last week was VC week and seeing as most of my meetings were AM PST I needed to crawl out of bed a little earlier than usual. On Friday I slunk home a little early and collapsed on the couch to catch up on my pod cast list. I mused at how wonderful TV was now that I downloaded a lot of the content. I selected Bill Clinton’s TED 2007 talk.

Earlier in the week I had seen a BBC HARDtalk interview with Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire - the UN Force Commander in Rwanda ‘93-’94. Dallaire, justifiably, heaps derision on the leaders in the West and the the role they played in allowing the genocide to occur. He singles Bill Clinton out as someone who could’ve done a lot more.

About 2/3s of the way through Clinton’s TED speech there is a moment that I think I will remember for the rest of my life. Clinton talks about the people who could’ve done a lot more to prevent Rwanda and then says “and most of all me”. It is a very rare moment when you see some one of his stature take some responsibility for such a horrid event. I found it very moving. It was this clear chiming note that rang in my ears. While he didn’t show the same level of leadership when the event occurred he was actively trying to make reparations.

Listening to: Harbour Town - Icehouse

I found this little eye-opener on BBC World:

Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts.

They appear to criticise President George W Bush’s refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions.

Listening to: Don’t Believe Anymore - Icehouse

I have been watching the Twitter stoosh that has been dominating the Rails community over the past week. It has been interesting to watch the personalities at play and the various arguments be put forward. My take is very similar to:

In the big picture, Twitter did exactly the right thing. They had a good idea and they buckled down and focused on delivering something as cool as possible as fast as possible, and it’s really hard, in early 2007, to beat Rails for that. When all of a sudden there were a few tens of thousands of people using it, then they went to work on the scaling.

Listening to: Dead Web - The Chills

A little while back I linked to a story about the ‘3 Laws’ and the Korean robotics industry. Zef raised an interesting question about military devices. It turns out that there is some thought about the laws governing military robotics:

• Let machines target other machines
• Let men target men

src: /.

Listening to: Walk On - U2

Another breathtaking piece by Richard Sweeney:

Insight- Strategic Hotel

Originally uploaded by Richard Sweeney.

Listening to: Quirks & Quarks - March 17, 2007 - CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks Complete Show

After about 2 years I have the final products:

Originally uploaded by flash5.

Listening to: Across The River - Peter Gabriel

MSNBC have a really important article about the insiders who tried to stop the abuses at Gitmo.

Speaking publicly for the first time, senior U.S. law enforcement investigators say they waged a long but futile battle inside the Pentagon to stop coercive and degrading treatment of detainees by intelligence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Listening to: Mumbai Theme Tune - Talvin Singh

Ars Technica have a wonderfully mind-opening article about the real questions that Intel have started asking now that they have jammed 80 cores onto one chip:

The picture that Sawicki painted is of a server-room-on-a-chip—a single piece of silicon that uses many cores and virtualization to do the kind of work that it currently takes multiple networked servers to do. Sawicki gave the example of a hypothetical multicore chip that can run a high-volume e-commerce solution on a single piece of silicon. Instead of web server box that takes orders and then sends them over the network to another machine for processing, you could use two separate cores for these tasks, with each core running a virtual server.

Problems might arise, however, when an order comes in through the virtual web server, and then order data has to be moved to another virtual server for processing. Ideally, you want the transaction data to move from virtual server to virtual server—and from core to core—without leaving the chip, Sawicki explained. It would be a waste to send those packets off the chip to a router to reach a destination that’s a few cores away.

A set of seriously cool questions to ask and answer!